


Mendelian Inheritance

by Dawnwind



Series: Mendalian Inheritance [1]
Category: The Professionals
Genre: Angst, Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:40:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5547638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George Cowley reflects on his life after surprise information upsets an apple cart in his view of family. Plus, there's Doyle and Bodie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mendelian Inheritance

Mendelian Inheritance

By Dawnwind

 

He watched them—had done so for many years. More years than either of them knew about. He sometimes wondered whether he should ever had partnered them. Was he playing puppet-master, controlling their lives from afar?

Or simply indulging in his own fancies?

They stood together just outside his office, heads bent until their foreheads nearly touched, like two mischievous school chums working out a prank. Doyle carried a parcel wrapped in garish red and green Christmas paper. Bodie muttered something to him too low to be heard from afar, but Doyle gave a nasty laugh.

George Cowley snorted with fond bemusement—undoubtedly, those two were conspiring on a holiday practical joke in his honour. Should he shut them down or go along, pretend to be surprised and then mildly rebuke them? 

Sipping the whisky in his glass, he prepared himself for the latest intel in his private investigation. He’d been waiting on this piece of information for days. He unwound the string holding the flap on the manila envelope closed and slid out the single sheet of paper. The contents knocked him back on his heels. 

This was a shock. Should not have been. He should have suspected. Should have remembered. 

Was his age catching up with him? Couldn’t be—he’d simply been…

Careless, exactly when he should have been mindful. Should have paid proper attention to detail.

Look where it had got him.

He pursed his lips, waiting until Bodie and Doyle continued down the passageway, both looking half guilty, half gleeful. Few would have taken them for highly experienced agents who had solved complex international cases.

Unsettled, Cowley stored the photograph and copy of a hospital chart into his secret file. That went into the locked drawer of his desk. He didn’t trust this highly confidential data to CI5’s personnel department, and had memorized the older material therein long ago. 

William Andrew Phillip Bodie, born to nineteen year old Clara Bodie on a rainy May morning in 1946, one year after the end of the war.

Cowley drank the dram of whisky, remembering Clara. Black fringe hanging over brow, delicate English rose complexion. Could still feel her breath on his cheek when they’d curled together in the dark. 

Felt a pang of regret, of—what could he call it now, so many years hence? A failing. They’d been at Bletchley Park in those last months after V-E day, dismantling and destroying secret documents. Never been any discussion of a permanent relationship between the two of them. Marriage wasn’t even a consideration.

She hadn’t told him she was with child when she left in late September to go back to a quiet office job in Liverpool. He’d been sent on missions to the newly created East Berlin and other posts far from home. Only learned of the boy a year later. 

When Clara died in 1954, Cowley went to the funeral. It was the third time he’d ever seen young Will, as he’d been called, up close. Dressed in black jacket and trousers, with a poorly tied black tie, Will stood beside his grandmother, stiff and straight as a soldier.

Cowley could not have been prouder. Despite that, he’d sat through the entire service recalling his visit when the baby was four months old, his first time back in England in over twelve months.

“I don’ expect anything from you, George,” Clara said stiffly, her eyes glued on the infant in his lap. “He’s mine. You’ve done your part.”

George studied the baby. He knew very little about wee bairns—had no younger siblings or cousins to compare William to. Round head like a football, sparse dark hair, the colour of Clara’s, and pudgy fingers balled into fists as if ready to take on all comers. What was there of him? He’d expected to recognise his own son. An expectation left over from reading too many Victorian novels in his youth? 

William gazed up at him with his mother’s bright blue eyes. The same eyes in Clara’s face challenged him. She didn’t expect—didn’t require him to marry her simply because they’d been intimate. 

He was stunned by her utter clarity and obstinate defiance of society’s conventions. 

The baby couldn’t weigh more than a stone, but somehow, he weighed heavily in George’s arms. “You’ll be outcast,” he said quietly.

“Because he’s a bastard?” She raised an eyebrow and plucked her son from him. “The same could be said of you, although you’ve a father well enough.” Holding William against her shoulder, her expression softened. “I would never call you bastard. I liked you, George. But it weren’t love. We both knew it.”

“There are responsibilities,” he insisted, feeling oddly lacking. He could cross international borders unseen, had been entrusted to keep state secrets during WWII and had fought in Spain when he wasn’t eighteen years old. Despite that, he heard himself echoing his own father’s stern warnings as if this wasn’t already _fait accompli._

He didn’t know what he felt beyond responsibility. Certainly, siring a son had not increased his own manliness. By some measure, he almost felt as if it had diminished him. Because he would never be there to raise the boy? 

“I will leave a sum…his birth right, if you will.” George stood, the old ache in his leg suddenly there—as if he needed another reminder of his mortality. “For his schooling, his future.”

She’d nodded, her perfect lips curved into a slight smile. “I’ll send a photo on his birthday.”

“What will you do?” George asked belatedly, putting on his hat. He’d been dismissed, from his own son’s life.

“Live as I intend to, as his mother.”

He’d never resented Clara, ever, and certainly not at her funeral. He’d simply followed Bodie’s life from afar.

The boy had grown up without a father—a man before he was out of short pants. Always fighting his own battles, refusing to rely on anyone else. Left home before his O levels, never finished a single advanced course in school, yet had followed his adventure-lust to Africa on a tramp steamer. Bodie had his mother’s fierce independence, her fiendish sense of humour, as well as her incredible intelligence. 

Cowley still saw precious little of himself in 3.5, although they shared the same genes. Even their eyes were not the same shade of blue.

The other one had come as a complete surprise. 

Raymond Francis Doyle was born on the 27th of January, 1945. Cowley knew where he’d been that day— Germany, involved in Operation Blackcock to force German troops across the Rur and Wurm Rivers. A successful campaign which helped end the war that much sooner.

Far from the London hospital where the only son of Mary Magdalene and Raymond Francis Doyle senior was born. The family, which eventually numbered five girls and one boy, moved often, to where ever Doyle senior could find work. They’d crossed the length and breadth of Great Britain, never staying anywhere for long. 

Possibly why Cowley had found it difficult to get substantial, factual documentation on Doyle during the original vetting to CI5. Numerous addresses, numerous schools. A variety of work. 

Bodie had also been involved in a wide variety of activities during his youth—but then, Cowley’d already followed his life from birth. Doyle had seemed so transparent in the initial scrutiny, with his dabbling in art and brief foray as a rent boy before the beating that nearly ended his life. It had left scars that marked his face to this day.

The lad came to Cowley’s notice while a copper in the London Met. He was intelligent, ideological, forthright and principled. Exactly the sort CI5 wanted in its ranks. 

He’d passed Cowley’s exacting standards with ease. 

And he’d clicked with Bodie immediately. Oh, there’d been the expected clashes any two strong-willed young men would have. The testosterone fuelled aggression and competition, but the two of them made a solid, if a wee bit unconventional, team. They were well liked, and took command of their operations with confidence.

Cowley was proud of them. He’d occasionally found himself referring to them as “my lads—“ as if he were father to both, instead of merely Bodie’s sire. It was utter hubris to think that he’d had much to do with Bodie’s upbringing, beyond the occasional gift of money when William’s gran couldn’t afford to pay the bills. He’d set up a secret trust, funnelled through a country lawyer, to keep the Bodie family if not comfortable, at least solvent. Still, he had a connection to Bodie, and after they met properly, in CI5, he’d felt an almost immediate kinship.

To discover that he had a second son thirty odd years after the fact was unconscionable. How had he not known? He’d been in secret service nearly all of his adult life. Had been able to pull strings privy to few in England beyond Prime Ministers and the royal family.

How had Ray Doyle remained under his radar?

In hindsight, he could see how the narrative had been obscured. Doyle’s mother, called Mary, came from a good Catholic family. The matriarch, Doyle’s grandmother, was christened Mary Margaret, known as Mags. She’d borne half a dozen girls and four boys, even more than her prodigious daughter. The girls were all called Mary: Mary Magdalene, Mary Margaret, Mary Martha, Mary Madeline, Mary Marguerite and Mary Matilda. 

Mistaking one sister for the other was common—similar names, similar appearances. It had been the unmarried Mary Margaret, Mary’s younger sister, who bore Ray Doyle. Cowley understood the confusion but he did not condone such utter sloppiness in mixing the names. Not in himself, and not in the operatives he’d used over the years.

The crux of it was that both Bodie and Doyle were bastards, although Doyle had been formally adopted by his aunt. Cowley now had the legal proof. 

What he abhorred even more was not remembering. Even the name Mary Margaret O’Malley had meant nothing initially. He’d merely been intrigued that the Doyles had a family secret young Raymond had probably not been told. It wasn’t until Cowley uncovered old photos—the intel that had come this morning, along with copies of the adoption papers—that memories stirred. 

He’d recognised the face from his distant past. Mimi, not Mary Margaret. A dancer at the Officers’ club, in 1944. He’d known she was on the game, but this was war, and he’d only wanted a warm bed to forget the battles for a single night. The friend he’d hoped to spend the night with had slipped away before George could get them a room.

Mimi, with her bright blue-green eyes and curly auburn hair, hadn’t asked any questions. She’d pulled him into her arms and held him tight. One night, one night out of a lifetime, nothing to even jot down in his diary.

Except she’d given him a son. His older son, he realised with a jolt. Doyle was almost a year and a half older than Bodie.

He felt a wave of intense and utter guilt. He’d spent the latter half of his life devoting himself to Bodie without overstepping the ground rules Clara had originally devised. No contact with the boy until Will attained his majority. By then, George Cowley had been hip deep in international politics. He’d kept his eye on his son when he could and rejoiced when the opportunity presented itself to bring Bodie into the fold.

He’d completely failed Doyle in not acknowledging his own—not mistake-- stupidity. Lying with a woman brought consequences. He had always known that. Had even counselled his underlings from time to time on the importance of doing the right thing. Ironic, considering that he’d never truly faced up the results of his own sleeping around. 

Marriage had never been an option. Not when he looked at his fellow officers as often as he did at a well curved calf below a silk skirt. He’d carefully constructed a façade as a confirmed bachelor to cover any improprieties with either sex. Hidden in plain sight, taking advantage of whomever he could be with when the time was right. 

Some had had a lasting effect—Clara. He could easily have lived with her, been her husband in another life. Not romantic love, but platonic companionship. Then there was his old mate from MI5, long dead, Jerome Fawkes…

Thinking of Fawkes still had the power to take his breath away.

Fawkes had been his… Cowley wanted to thrust away the image of the man: tall, dark, with that dashing pencil thin moustache. 

Instead, he walked into the corridor, stood where he could hear Bodie and Doyle bantering in the rest room. 

“So Father Christmas gave the head elf his tool and showed him how to wrap his hands just so...” Bodie said triumphantly.

Doyle guffawed. “Always knew they were doing more than makin’ toys up at the North Pole.” 

Cowley smiled, feeling his age, the years. Jerry had been his other half. The way Bodie and Doyle were to each other. 

His lover.

He’d watched them for so long. He knew what they did when they were alone. Understood the importance of having someone to trust absolutely, to love unto death. He’d seen how undone Bodie had been when Doyle was shot. 

If that wasn’t love, he didn’t know what was. He’d nearly lost his way when Jerry died, poisoned by Soviets in the Cold War sixties. 

In the end, did it matter that William Bodie and Ray Doyle were brothers in blood as well as soul? Should he tell them?

Would they hate him if he did so? He’d sometimes wondered if Bodie suspected the truth. What about Doyle? He’d been raised to think Mary was his birth mother.

Still laughing, Bodie burst out of the restroom. He stopped abruptly at the sight of Cowley, Doyle all but running into his back.

“Look where you’re going, will you?” Doyle groused, grabbing Bodie’s arm.

“Oi, sir, were you waiting for us?” Bodie asked politely. He shook off Doyle, straightening his loosened tie. 

The old image of that dark haired bairn, blue eyes red rimmed, standing by his mother’s gravesite in a black suit and tie superimposed over thritysix year old Bodie, almost flooring Cowley.

“I have. We’ve something of utmost importance and delicacy to discuss,” Cowley declared, using formality to cover his nerves. He’d always done so. It stiffened his spine and gave him courage. “4.5.” He beckoned Doyle, glancing at the man’s attire. The striped shirt and worn blue jeans would not do. “We’ll all three be having dinner at my club, tonight, half past eight. You’ll need a presentable jacket and tie.”

Doyle glowered, suspicion chasing the first emotion. 

Bodie snickered, elbowing Doyle. “Can lend you one of me own, sunshine. Or p’haps a stop on Savile Row is in order?” he said in a fair approximation of an Etonian drawl.

“I’ve got a tie, haven’t I?” Doyle protested. “Thank you, sir, but I’m wondering what we would talk about there that couldn’t be done here in your office with fish, chips and whisky? Is this a new case?”

He was quick that one, always catching on to Cowley’s double and triple think even before Bodie did. George saw it now, belatedly. He and Bodie had the drive, the need to plunge headlong into battle. Action and adrenalin were their addictions. They understood strategy and negotiation. He’d given his younger son bravery, a sense of humour and a love of life. 

Doyle had his brain, the intelligence to solve intricate logic puzzles, as well as the introspective soul of an artist. He was slender and fine, which could have come from the Cowley line, with the moves of a dancer—or cat burglar. 

“This will be a private discussion—for our ears only,” Cowley said, examining his two lads with a burst of parental pride that he was sure must shine out of his face. “I’ll expect you later —“

“Yes, sir,” Bodie answered, glancing at Doyle with a speculative expression. “We’ll be there.”

Doyle nodded, arms crossed, leaning against the doorjamb. “With bells on.”

George Cowley loved his sons. The realisation filled his heart in an instant.

“Happy Christmas, then.” Bodie laughed abruptly and started down the corridor with Doyle at his shoulder.

“To you, as well.” Cowley smiled, banishing the guilt and self-flagellation for a night when he was too deeply in his cups. This could be to his advantage. Sons to leave his organization to. Family to trust, after all this time.

What would be the outcome? Could he hope that his sons would love him? Or would Bodie resent the deceptions he’d perpetuated. Would Doyle believe that his mother—his adoptive mother—had lied to preserve the family honour? If so, how would he take the news that Cowley was his real father?

He could easily predict Doyle: that flash of anger and stubborn defiance that always reared when he was confronted. Bodie could be cagier, hiding his emotions behind jokes and silly voices. They’d both turn to each other—as it should be. 

Would they turn against him, or embrace the new relationship?

It was nerve-wracking, and yet somehow the culmination of all that had come before. The news had to be told; his sons had the right to know.

Stopping at his office, George unlocked his drawer and took out the private file. Undisputable proof, that’s what Bodie and Doyle would need to believe. He nodded and walked out of the building humming What Child is This. 

Tonight wouldn’t be an easy December dinner—but it would certainly be a Christmas they’d be unlikely to forget.

FIN

_Gregor Mendel is known at the father of modern genetics for his research in pea pods._

 

 

 

.


End file.
